The Light
by VilyaSage
Summary: The worlds have been reunited, and everyone is happy. Except for one. There is one who can do nothing but wait. You'll have to read the rest. One-Shot.


**The Light**

A/N: Spoiler warning. You've been warned. The narrator, while not hard to figure out after a bit, is Yuan. I took a bit of a break from all my Kratos one-shots and wrote this. Enjoy it!

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It's quiet here.

Perhaps that's what I like best about this place. The quiet, how a person can just sit and envelop himself in it and not worry about the past or the future, or even the present. The silence reflects the soul of the one who paid such a price on this very ground. It is a brilliant, quiet light, and buried within it are smiling eyes and a look of uninhibited wonder. I know of only one other place that could hold such a feeling and still exist as it should.

Libraries are notorious for their quiet, despite often feeling forced; this place of my memory, somewhere between a library and a sanctuary, has taken hold of the silence and merged with it, made the absolute noiselessness a part of itself. One can now no longer exist without the other.

It was here that I first felt that way, too. This was the first place I can remember truly noticing how strange life could be, that it could lead four people, so completely different in demeanor and dream, to be together here in a room stacked floor to ceiling with books.

Books themselves demand calm and concentration. To be in the presence of someone reading is to automatically lower the voice or move away to a less bothersome place; to see a book held open is to have the strange sensation of stirred curiosity. A room full of them, dozens of stories that have never been experienced, is as silent as a winter night.

Perhaps I wouldn't know this, either, if not for her. My clearest early memory of our journey is seeing her sitting against one of the shelves, a moderately thick tome held open in her lap, her face changing as she read to reflect that which she found in reading. In the depths of her eyes rested a concentration only someone like her can manage.

I remember her laughing as she came to some parts of the story, and crying out at others, and meeting the page with her particular angry glare—another trait of which it seemed only she was capable—when the reading did not go as she had planned. Once she looked up at me, shook her head in amusement, and sighed before returning to the book.

Martel.

So early on in our journey, before any of us truly knew the others, save of course Mithos and Martel…it was then that we were least vulnerable. Only in ignorance is anyone truly invincible. Without knowing her as I soon would, without knowing enough of her past, her life, or her brother, I could look upon this scene as the person I was, not the one I was to become. I could watch her reading—something so normal, so innocent, you would never have known her from any other woman—and see Martel, the older sister of the boy who wanted to end the war.

She was a reader, and within those chosen few who are born with the desire to read is also an unending quest to understand, and to experience. There was nothing quite so radiant about Martel as her love of the experience of life. The sun's rays through retreating clouds would not escape her any more than the sound of a thunderstorm. The pieces of life that were such, so pure and untainted by the ideas of greed, superiority and discrimination; these she understood perfectly. She never had need to ask, of the sun or snow or stars, why?

It was people she truly wished to question. All people, of all races, were never quite what they could have been; the modern view of this seems idealistic. Martel was not an idealist. She was simply following what she had known her entire life. She operated on the principle that everything could be understood, and that everything carried with it a lesson.

I didn't know this about Martel for months. I certainly had no idea of such things that day waiting for Mithos to descend from the top of the Tower of Mana. That day, I saw Martel in her own purest form, her unique balance of light and color; within her, there could be no darkness. There was no place in her heart for the black emotions of hatred or anger or greed. Only the light—happiness, sadness, curiosity—had a place within her. Only the light ever belonged.

I recall that one moment most vividly for the simple reason that it was the first time Martel graced me with her smile. She had smiled before, of course, but this time it was meant for me alone, something I could see that her brother and my friend could not. Then, it was a gesture of friendship; now, I realize I should have treasured it as a gift, something far more precious than any metal, stone or glass.

The days we traveled together were the best I have ever experienced. My affection for the older sister of Mithos grew as time passed, and though the boy would have preferred it otherwise, Martel came to like me, as well. She constantly dealt with her brother's attempts to keep up apart, never once seeming annoyed or angry. The impression she gave was indeed one of unparalleled understanding.

There were other moments. There was a day when we were caught in the rain, and had just reached the nearest city when the sun emerged, even as the rain continued. Mithos and Kratos continued into the city, but Martel stood alone at its entrance, transfixed by the sky. I remember well the look on her face, and I would like to think I shared it as I followed her gaze to the rainbow above. What I saw was joy.

We slept under the stars many times, the four of us, but I only truly recall it once or twice. There is truly wonder in a night spent watching the night pass above. I believed I was noble, far more than the man I had previously been, for joining Mithos in his quest to fulfill his ideals. When deserved pride and weary contentment meet beneath a canopy of stars, the possibilities seem fathomless.

Martel knew this. She knew more than any of us the secrets the night sky could hold. As the sun set each day, all trace of books or conversation would vanish from her. Martel watched the day end in silence, the same way she watched it begin. There was great significance in the rising and falling of the light.

She only ever spoke to me once during one of those nights. It was only one sentence, but it was enough to imprint upon me forever the depth she had been unconsciously given. _Even here, as each day closes in darkness, the light cannot disappear_.

I remember her sadness, as well. She watched discrimination—between half-elves and elves, humans and half-elves—reach newer and more appalling heights each new day, and faced her own background with nothing of the angry barricade of her—of our—people. It bothered Martel that two people would fight one another, no matter whose people they happened to be. The very idea that one could dislike another for something so trivial—and unchangeable—as background was something that seemed almost foreign to her. It seemed impossible, unreal.

The worst I have ever seen her, though, was the day she saw the humans fighting. One human and another—the same race, the same looks, even similar statures and clothing. Martel cried that day, for the people who could turn against their own brothers. She cried for those people who could betray and hate and not feel the mark of it within them; for those who did not know, somehow, that they had done wrong.

What, now, should I do with these memories? I loved Martel. I do still, though she no longer lives as I would have her do. What should I do with the images in my mind, the pieces of memory…a smile, a laugh, a gentle reprimand to Mithos, a curious, confused frown at a new situation…the dance of emotion that came with reading a book. All of this is mine to treasure and keep, and mine to hold or discard.

I can never be rid of it, but keeping it nearly tears my heart in half. I lost the only thing that ever meant anything to me, and I blatantly went against the one person determined to bring it back. I cannot decide if I am selfless or selfish for this, if I have played the role of the hero or the villain.

Whatever I have done, Martel would approve. She knew only absolute right and wrong, and their boundaries—the true boundaries, not the corrupted version held by most. I have done what I felt was right, and Martel would agree with me.

It's quiet here, sitting against the stone and watching the wind shake the branches of the sapling produced by the Great Seed. This is Martel's quiet—the peace she searched so long for and found only within the sanctuary of books or within the untainted beauty of nature. The sun is rising, and I am silent. There is something significant about the return of the light.

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Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or game or whatever. they're all (c) Namco.

Now...review! I'd love to hear your thoughts!


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